At the request of the interviewer, I computer modified her voice.
You may notice that I have rendered her a bit more masculine in the process, my sweet secret revenge.
We also agree to conduct the interview via audio only. I'm not quite sure why all these precautions, but I respect her wishes. So here goes.
She's had a few questions regarding the video I posted yesterday. How do I experience people? You may wish to watch that video. It's short. It's eight minutes. How do I experience people?
And then she had a few questions. I thought the questions were pertinent and interesting. And so I invited her to conduct an interview.
Introduction over. Let's delve right in.
Many say that your video yesterday about how you perceive and experience people is overly dramatic.
This is the problem that victims of narcissistic abuse face. When they try to describe or convey or communicate the harrowing experiences they've had with narcissists, people tell them, you're exaggerating, you're over the top, you're being dramatic, you're being hysterical.
And similarly, when narcissists try to communicate their internal experience, people often say, snap out of it. You're overthinking. You're not a narcissist. You're just an ahole, for example.
So people deny the reality of narcissism and even more so the reality of narcissistic abuse.
And I think they do this because they want to believe in the essential goodness of the universe. They want to believe that evil never prevails, that maybe even evil doesn't exist. They want to cast everything in terms that are non-threatening.
If narcissism is just an exaggeration of daily traits and if narcissistic abuse is just dramatizing typical domestic situations, then all is well and there's no need to lose sleep at night.
And this is why I reject the claims that my video yesterday has been overly dramatic. If anything, I think it understated the inner experience of the narcissist.
So that's all I have to say about this.
In the video confession you posted yesterday, you said, and I quote, I experience people as dim apparitions, inert characters in a boring novel or a tedious, over long film, lifeless, except when they provide me with narcissistic or sadistic supply at which point they spring to life, like so many nutcrackers or gingerbread men, and become radiant, kinetic, idealized beings, stuttering, then freezing frames in obsolete films or in burning celluloid photographs.
Could you elaborate on that? Do you see people like that from the first minute you meet them?
That's actually an excellent question.
First of all, I believe that the inability to visualize or to conceptualize people in your life is a form of aphantasia. Aphantasia is the inability to visualize, but I believe that there is mental aphantasia.
Narcissists, for example, have an empathy deficit, and I call it empathy effantasia. They cannot visualize other people. They cannot put themselves in other people's shoes. They cannot visualize other people. They cannot put themselves in other people's shoes. They cannot bring other people to mind. They cannot hang on to the external and separate existence of other people. They internalize everything immediately. The entire external world becomes just a figment of the narcissist mind or imagination.
So I believe it's a form of aphantasia.
Now, when I meet someone for the first time, I see them through a glass darkly, some kind of ectoplasm. Everything is very fuzzy. Everything is very... I mean, there are no contours. There's no delineation, demarcation. Even the faces are blurred. It's a fuzzy, fuzzy emanation. People appear to me to be faded, forlorn, not fully there as if they were melting into the environment, as if they were dissolving. I mentioned yesterday, wisp of smoke. I think that's the apt simile.
Anyhow, when I first meet them, in my mind, they are mute. They're mute. Even if they talk, even if they're trying to communicate, even if they respond to my questions, they are on mute.
And this is why Narcissus, by the way, cannot handle conversations. They don't talk to you. They talk at you. They lecture. And when you as an interlocutor respond to them or contribute your own peace, they become bored. They become distracted. They lose interest.
Because they are focused only on what they have to say. As far as they are concerned, you're not there. And if you are there, you are just a prop. And as a prop, you are not entitled to your own contributions to the conversation. And they mute you, as if your mouth is sewn shut.
Narcissists view other people as if their mouths were sewn shut. It's a very eerie, a very eerie kind of visualization or visual, but it's true.
And so when I meet someone, they fade into and out of my frame. The frame is mine exclusively, and they are there as a courtesy or as an annoyance or as an intrusion. They're there and not there simultaneously. I remove them at will.
Even if they are there physically, I can remove them and do remove them very often from my mind psychologically and mentally. It's as if I see through them as if they have become transparent. It's the way healthy people regard objects, inanimate objects, through their peripheral vision. You know when you have an object at the very corner of your eye and your gaze is directed elsewhere.
In the case of the narcissist, the gaze is directed inward.
And so the narcissist is unable to perceive objects peripherally, outside, externally, externally, separately.
It's only when I consider people as potential sources of supply or as potential partners to be inducted into my shared fantasy. Only when I perceive them as possible collaborators or colluders or members of my cult. Only then they become alive in my mind.
And when they do, when I say to myself, wow, this woman gives me enormous high quality narcissistic supply or this guy can promote my work and my accomplishments, make me famous or whatever, it's only then that I transition from the zombie dead image of other people, other people as zombies as dead. I transitioned from that to the opposite pole.
Suddenly, I develop an intense interest in people, an obsession with the details of their lives, and a fascination with their personality.
So it's very goal-oriented. The goal is narcissistic supply, sex, services, and safety, the four S's.
It's very goal-oriented in the sense that when I perceive or apprehend that someone is capable of providing these functions, giving me what I need, they spring to life. They are animated or reanimated.
Otherwise, they are inanimate, inert, frozen.
It's a very startling and unsettling transition, even for the narcissist.
Suddenly he notices people who are potential sources or potential partners. He suddenly notices them and it's as if an object in your life would come alive.
Imagine your refrigerator comes alive and begins to tap dance. It's as startling as far as the narcissist is concerned.
But even then, people interest me as actors for my scripts. I have a script. I have a theater play and they are auditioning. They're auditioning and they're potential actors or maybe they're props for the production of my shared fantasy.
I cathect them.
In other words, at that point I invest in them emotional energy. This is called cathexis.
So I cathect them. That much is true.
But because I cathect, essentially their representations in my mind, I cathect the internal object that represents people in my mind, not the people themselves. The people themselves have no existence, period, ever.
They come alive in my mind as idealized objects. It's like an animated film that is based on people out there, based on characters out there.
But my reaction is to the animated film, and I cathect, I emotionally invest in the animated film, not in the characters that feature in the animated film.
And because this is the case, because I'm not emotionally invested in people, I decathect them with alarming alacrity, literally overnight.
In other words, I emotionally un-invested, I emotionally withdraw, I avoid suddenly, abruptly, unexpectedly, unpredictably, shockingly, overnight.
So on Monday, you could be the love of my life, you could be my favorite person, you could be my most amazing business partner, you could be my best friend, that's Monday.
And then on Tuesday, for whatever reason, maybe you criticize me, maybe you disagreed with me, maybe you set boundaries, maybe you just ran your usefulness, ran out, whatever the case may, maybe I found an alternative.
Whatever the case may be, on Monday, you were number one. On Tuesday, I barely recall your name and I can't conjure up your face in my imagination.
And I'm kidding you not. That's not an exaggeration. On Tuesday, you're gone. I don't care about you. I don't care if you die. You're utterly gone.
And just the day before, you were my life partner. You were my business partner. You are my best friend. You are my everything. You are my life. You are amazing. You are the entire universe.
And the next day, you are nobody. You are nothing. You are something a scrape of my shoe. If I have time to.
And so these transitions, it's not even devaluation. It's cathexis, decathexis. Emotionally invested, emotionally uninvested.
Withdrawing the emotional investment and redirecting it elsewhere.
And that is shocking to the victims. They just can't perceive in countenance the fact that they have been of zero importance to the narcissists, that they have meant nothing, that they were just excuses to create internal representations, inner objects with which a narcissist could interact, which he could idealize and devalue, in his own demented needs to reenact childhood conflicts.
They can't grasp this.
At some point, the narcissists loses all interests and it's very sudden. He moves on.
When I do, I lose all interests and I move on. I don't give a second thought to the people I've left behind.
Because I've never perceived them as people. I experienced my life and I experience my past as a novel or a movie. I'm more of an observer than a true participant.
So everyone in the book or on the set are characters, like a video game, like characters in a video game.
When the film is over and the novel has been read, the characters are sealed forever among the covers of the novel or the frames of the movie. They're trapped like ants in amber.
They become vague, vague memories. It's very hard for me to grasp these memories.
When I'm reminded of something, for example, suddenly a scene erupts and I recall a specific street, a specific moment.
I can't place another person in that scene. I'm all alone.
I know cognitively that I've been to that restaurant or I've been to that street or I've been to that shop with someone.
And I also know cognitively that at the time that person who has been with me was very meaningful to me.
And yet I can't recall who it was.
And I definitely cannot recall anything beyond names and usually first name, if I'm lucky.
I cannot conjure up a face, a body, a taste, a smell, interactions, specific conversations, almost nothing, 10% maybe of what has happened.
This, of course, has to do with dissociation, but I don't think it's only dissociation.
I think narcissists don't care. They simply don't give an F or they don't give an S about other people.
Other people are there to be used, sometimes abused and discarded. Like, I don't know, a shovel, or they are just objects, instruments.
And you wouldn't invest emotionally in the long term in your refrigerator. Can you recall your first refrigerator or your first smartphone? Some people can. I cannot and many cannot.
So this is a situation. I'm trying to get it across. It's such an alien experience that I am not quite sure that it's doable, not quite sure that I'm succeeding.
Is it because they cease to exist when they cease to give and I expect to be treated as transactionally?
Well, yeah, there is the element of transactionalism or transaction.
When people are no longer of use, so why invest scarce resources in recalling them? What's the purpose of remembering someone if that someone will never again be in your life and cannot contribute to it in any way, shape, or form?
So I don't bother to recall. I erase memories, I need this case, you know.
I do miss. I do miss what I got from them. I do miss the functions they had fulfilled. Sex, maybe, supplies, services and safety.
But even when, for example, I recall the sex, I'm all alone. I'm all alone in the frame of my memory. There's nobody there. There's only me. I know fuzzily and vaguely that someone had been with me in bed, but that someone is generic, interchangeable, faceless, lifeless.
And so the focus is on me. It's very auto-erotic.
I can't recall people at all, although I recall perfectly periods in my life. And not necessarily the periods, because I don't have autobiographical recall. I don't have autobiocir episodic memory.
But I recall periods, generalized, a generalized atmosphere, especially if the period has been rich in abundant narcissistic supply. Then I miss that period. I miss the adulation at my accomplishments.
I don't miss the people. Service providers are interchangeable. I miss the fact that they have been there to witness my glory and grandeur. I miss the fact that the period that I've shared my life with these people has been rich in narcissistic supplies. It was a good period. I missed that.
But even then if push comes to shove and you press me for details, I can give you details. 90%, if not 95% of my memories are gone.
I've once made an exercise. I tried to write down everything I remembered from my eight years' marriage. My first marriage, marriage lasted eight years.
And so I wrote down, bit by bit, detail by detail, event by event, place by place, time by time, everything that I recalled from that marriage, eight years.
When I tallied these memories, when I added them, the cumulative time was one hour. I recall one hour from my eight years long marriage.
And I have extreme difficulty to recall the face of my first wife, anything about her, or anything would be an exaggeration, but like 99% of, I remember maybe five things she's done and five things I've done, and that's just about it, eight years. Those were intensive eight years. Very.
So this is the situation. And I know it's unbelievable. It's incredible. It sounds as if I'm inventing something, confabulating maybe, or exaggerating, or dramatizing, overinking, but it's not. It's the truth.
So, anything else?
In the same video, you said, people passed through my perimeter, devoid of all significance, their limbs askew, their mouth escaping. They invariably exit stage left, never to be brought to mind. Care to explain that?
I think it's self-explanatory, but I'll give it a go, give it a try.
People are fleeting intrusions into my inner world.
Regrettably as a narcissist, I depend on the output or the input from people. Their output and my input from people. I depend on people.
And I hate this. I resent this. Unlike the psychopath, I am not self-sufficient. I am not self-contained. And that's narcissistic injury.
Why am I dependent on people? People are stupid. People are inferior. I hold people in content. All people, by the way. No exception. I hold people in content. Why should I be dependent on them? I'm so vastly godlike and superior.
So I grant people temporary access to my life and to my mind.
But when people are expended, when they have become of no utility, when they're no longer useful, when shelf life has expired, I discard people.
And I think the best analogy would be the way you discard the battery.
I discard people the way one discards an old battery.
My life is the smartphone. And people are the batteries in my smartphone.
So when the battery is over, you throw the battery, replace it with a new battery. But the smartphone remains the same.
And of course, you don't pay attention to the battery. You don't memorialize the battery. You don't recall the battery. You don't emotionally invest in the battery. You don't get attached to the battery. You don't bond with the battery. You don't make love to the battery.
I mean, a battery is a battery, is a battery.
You just take it out, throw it to the garbage, and buy a new one who looks exactly the same, and put it in and forget about it.
It's invisible. It's invisible.
It's crucial to the functioning of the smartphone, but it's still invisible, and it's invisible when it's in use, and it's invisible when it's in use and it's invisible when it's discarded.
It's precisely the way I see people and I hope this time I succeeded to get through because it's becoming more more difficult to kind of and I'm not quite sure I see in your eyes that I'm not quite doing, you know, getting it.
So, this is true.
I have nostalgia for the period, for memories of abundant, high quality supply, never for people.
I don't miss anyone ever. They are mere museum memories trapped in the amber of my mind.
Of course it's true. Otherwise, why would they say it? It's true.
I think of it as a form of self-supply via secondary supply involving recall, involving memory.
But to remind you, secondary supply is when someone witnesses your moments of glory and triumph and accomplishments.
As a narcissist, you have someone by your side who is a constant witness to your triumphs and victories and achievements and status and glory and glamour and so on.
And that someone by your side is like a tape recorder. She has to play back these moments in order to regulate the flow of supply when supply is meager and deficient.
Okay? That's secondary supply.
But narcissist is also in self-supply.
And I think memory in the case of narcissism is a form of self-supply and a form of secondary supply.
In other words, when the narcissist doesn't have anyone by his side to remind him how great he is, how amazing he is, how he hypnotized and enthralled the audience, how he was amazingly incisive and insightful and what have you, when there's no one there to tell the narcissist how the false self is not false and how his grandiosity is justified.
When there's no one there, the narcissist does it for himself.
He becomes his own source of supply, source of secondary supply. He becomes his own tape recorder.
And so he needs memories. He uses memories.
The narcissist sits back and says, let me now remember the amazing lecture I have given, of the amazing seminar I've given, and how the audience was utterly enraptured.
Let me remember this, let me recall this.
And by remembering it and by recalling it, let me supply myself. This would become narcissistic supply.
So this is my view of memory. The function of memory and narcissism.
When I recall, when I dredge up moments of triumph and self-imputed, self-aggrandizing glory, I become my own source of secondary narcissistic supply. It is then that I come as close as possible to self-sufficiency.
And self-sufficiency matters to me because I'm godlike. I should not rely on other people. I should not be dependent on other people. It's humiliating. It's shameful.
So self-supply is a way to convince myself that I am not dependent on anyone.
So I'm emotionally invested in being self-sufficient. I have a vested interest to erase people from my mind because it renders me my own source of supply and it removes my unsettling egodystonic dependency on others.
In other words, if I erase people from my memory, then I can lie to myself and deceive myself that I've actually never needed people. I've never been dependent on people. It was all my doing.
I can self-supply in the total absence of people. And that's great. It makes me feel even more God-like.
I have an inbuilt incentive as far as narcissism goes.
As a narcissist, I have an inbuilt incentive to pretend that my life has always been devoid of and barren of other people. They've never been there, and they've never contributed anything of significance to me. I've always been self-reliant, self-supplying, self-sufficient, and self-contained.
Like, for example, in this interview.